Hood River Valley senior David Flores breaks up a pass from The Dalles' sophomore Fabian Canchola and freshman Miguel Leon in a league game April 1 in The Dalles.
Hood River Valley senior David Flores breaks up a pass from The Dalles' sophomore Fabian Canchola and freshman Miguel Leon in a league game April 1 in The Dalles.
Mark B. Gibson photos
Ridgeview came from two goals behind in the second half, then survived a scoreless overtime before defeating host Hood River on penalty kicks to win the Intermountain Conference season-ending boys soccer tournament, 3-2, Friday at Henderson Stadium.
The match was part of a soccer championship doubleheader, as the two schools also played for the girls crown — also won by Ridgeview (see page A13).
The second-seeded Ravens (8-3) had lost in somewhat of a similar fashion March 18, when the two teams played in Redmond. Top-seeded HRV (6-3-1), the regular season champion, scored three goals in the final eight minutes to come from behind and win, 3-2, in the earlier matchup.
Eagle Coach Jaime Rivera said fans can count on quality soccer when these teams face off. Both teams were resilient in the back-and-forth match. “I feel bad for those guys,” he said of his players. “It’s a great group of guys. These guys fought to the bitter end. That was like a state playoff game. That was a semifinal, championship-like game. It was pretty evenly matched. Obviously, we caught them flat footed early. I was really surprised actually.”
Ridgeview bottled up HRV’s leading scorer Jaden Dubon the entire match. “We knew they were going to give Jaden quite a bit of attention,” Rivera said. “They had him double, triple-teamed.”
There was good reason for that, as Dubon scored all three HRV goals in the March IMC showdown. The extra attention afforded the talented junior gave other Eagle players some space, Rivera said. That included Serbian exchange student Braneslav Petrovic who took advantage with two first-half goals for HRV. Ridgeview had the upper hand for the next 15 minutes, but the Ravens couldn’t score. “They were possessing the ball really nicely, but they didn’t score,” Rivera said. “But neither did we.” The HRV coach said part of his halftime talk was about not settling for the two-goal lead.
But as hard as the Eagles pressed the action at the start of the second half, they couldn’t find the back of the net. “We just couldn’t get a goal in those first few minutes like we wanted,” Rivera said.
Eventually, Ridgeview did — twice — to tie the match, but that only seemed to spark the Eagles once more.
“When they tied it 2-2, we hunkered down and we kind of had the momentum. We had them,” Rivera said. “We had four corner kicks and a free kick, and we could not convert. We had some really good headers and their goalie saved them or their defenders cleared them.”
The two 10-minute overtime periods were equally as exciting, but neither team could score. Hood River advanced to the title match by defeating Pendleton 5-0 in one April 7 semifinal. Ridgeview topped The Dalles, 4-1, in the other semi.
Rivera said the championship loss won’t define this year’s HRV team. “When you coach this age group of kids, these young men are developing and maturing,” he said. “It’s hard as a young man to learn from your mistakes. It really is. And man, these guys, they were able to quickly get out of the lows.”
Rivera said, for example, if the team’s energy was low in practice, and “we could be working harder, man they snapped out of it really quickly. These guys don’t give up, don’t quit. That’s a good quality to have.”
Thirteen HRV seniors saw their last high school soccer action this spring: Andrew Mondragon, Petrovic, Danny Villafana, Omar Escobedo, Alexis Melchor, Gael Martinez, Damian Trejo, Jose Magana, Crixtian Valdez, David Flores, Jose Baeza, Abhi Eldurkar and Jesus Ledezma.
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